Soliloquiorum Adscriptorum Caput Postremum [Incertus]

The Last Chapter of the Soliloquies Ascribed to Saint Augustine, Recovered from Obscurity by J. Trombeilli John Chrysostom Trombeilli to the Reader. We know indeed that the book which is entitled Augustine’s Soliloquies was not composed by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and most illustrious Doctor of the Church; but we also know that it came from a praiseworthy writer. It will therefore, I think, be welcome to the Reader if we publish what we have found appended to that same little book in a codex which the most noble and most humane man, Faustinus Avogadro, Count of Brescia, sent to me as a gift from his select library. In many places, indeed repeatedly, that codex differs from the editions of the Soliloquies; but we have decided to present only the last chapter of that book, which has not yet been published. We leave it, however, to the Reader to judge the value and authority of this addition. Here, then, is what we found after those words “my gray hairs.

Here begins the last chapter of the Soliloquies. Let the pious man lead you to his heights, and lead him into your inmost being; for be certain that you love your own fault too much if, although perhaps you love him supremely, you do not yet love him singularly: that is, if you seek or receive any other consolation. Therefore, consider what it is that in your life you have loved more ardently, anxiously desired, what affected you more pleasantly, and delighted you more deeply than all other things, or could delight you. Consider, then, whether you feel the same violence of affection, the same abundance of delight, when you burn with desire for the highest lover, when you rest in his love: for there is no doubt that he does not yet hold the bosom of your affection if the sting of your intimate love penetrates your soul in divine affections less keenly, stirs it more tepidly, than it once penetrated or stirred it in other affections, or could in any way affect you by the attraction of something else: you are also loved less by him if you are not yet called to those theoretical ecstasies, or have not yet merited to follow him when he calls. I will no longer call you servants, he says, but my friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. Therefore, the sublimity of divine revelations is a clear sign that you love perfectly, or are loved, if in the desire for the highest things you are swept up to the heavens, and pass into those anagogic strivings through an alienation of the mind.

And whoever wishes to devote himself to this power of contemplation must learn to rest not only from evil works but also from superfluous thoughts. What is needed is compunction and sighs more than arguments; frequent groans more than copious reasonings; tears more than sentences; prayer more than reading; the grace of tears more than the knowledge of letters; the contemplation of heavenly things more than the occupation with earthly things. O Light of minds, God, drive from me the night of folly and grant me the day of wisdom; bring forth the sun of truth and justice from the most profound depths of your nature, surpassing all intellect, into the ether of my mind; upon the earth of my heart extinguish the phantasms of bodies and the phantoms of my various thoughts. Create the offspring of your intelligences in the womb of my mind. Pour out your spirit upon the waters of my weakness, so that, turned toward you, conformed to your Son, I may see you in yourself and all things beneath you. O purest truth, see yourself in me, understand yourself in me. For through myself I see nothing but vain, fleeting, and perishable things, and I see nothing but false and corporeal images; through myself I am nothing but death and a dark abyss, and imperfect. In you I am what I am; in you I live what I live; in you I understand what I understand, because you are the supreme intelligence, the supreme essence, the supreme life, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a triple unity, infinite, and without end, one God forever and ever.

Arnen.